International Digital Marketing

Everyone wants a cool website. Awards in this digital industry go normally to sites and concepts that are cool. Clients and managers come up to us, saying they want something innovative and cool or that they have seen something cool their competitor has done and they want to replicate it.

Yet the problem many websites are facing is that we concentrate so much in creating cool, avant-garde, up-to-date “stuff” that we forget the end user. When creating and designing a new webpage, strategy, usability, content structure and SEO are as important, if not more important, as design.

What is the point of having an amazing looking webpage if your potential customers do not know how to use it or search engines cannot find it?

Tip #1: Make your website useful for the end user

Design for your audience. Analyse and find out what kind of features, content and information are useful and attractive for the audience you want to reach. What could add value to their experience on the website, so they will come back and recommend the site for others? Whether it is useful tips, expert advice, social experience, consumer reviews, games, or up-to-date information highly depends on your audience.

Tip #2: Make it easy for users to find your website

Do not make it hard for users to find your site. SEO optimise your webpage (title tags, headings, populate the content with keywords…), make sure that robots have found your site and the pages are indexed (make sure you unblock the search bots once you have published the site officially), and link to your webpage from other websites and social networks.

If you are using offline media, do not forget to add your page URL in the end of the commercial, press article, poster, video, display or whatever method you are using. Users can either search for it online or type it directly in the browser to find you.

Tip #3: Make it easy for users to browse through the website

Do not complicate things just for the sake of being pretty. An example of this is the hidden navigation. This means webpages that have hidden hot spots the user needs to hover over to find. Cool or not, it makes it difficult for end user to find content they are looking for.

Therefore it is good idea to stop and evaluate how your website is organized. Ask yourself whether the structure and categories make sense from user perspective and whether visitors can find the information they want quickly. Offer options such as back button, previous search and visible previous categories. Having the previous user journey visible makes it easier for site visitor to navigate. An e-commerce example: home -> women -> shoes -> high heels.

 Tip #4: Give different routes for users

Visitors come to your website through different channels (e.g. direct URL, social media, search, blogs…) and many of them do not land directly on your homepage. Visitors in different stages of purchase funnel also behave very differently and this is why it is very important to give them various routes to navigate through the website.

To help user continue their journey after landing to the page, use always visible navigation bar, site map, index page and navigation text links. Remember that this also gives more information for the search engines and helps search bots to navigate across the web platform.

Tip #5: Try to avoid flash

Flash is pretty, but complicated. Flash is not SEO friendly, flash is not mobile friendly and in some cases flash is not even user-friendly. Search robots do not read flash and even with Google visual search you only see an image of a puzzle instead of the flash site or video. Mobile phones do not read flash either, which means that you can lose the leads coming through these devices. Even a normal Internet user might get a barrier accessing your site if he does not have the right version of flash installed.

Of course, in some cases flash does add value to the website enhancing the user experience, for example by showing the product from different ankles e.g. car configurator. Yet before adding some nice animation to the page, think who does it really benefit. You and your managers, who see the page everyday and are bored … or the site visitor?

However, if you really want to have a flash site, create an html backup page and/or mobile site. If you really want to use an intro movie leading to your homepage page, use html5 instead (you can even add a like button if you wish).

Tip #6: Use text, not graphics

Search engines are biased towards text content and do not read the text in the images they run across. It means that even if the website seems to have text containing keywords, it may not be the case. Maybe the web designer is using image files to keep a certain font the same in different browsers or it is done to give the webpage cooler look and feel. Anyhow, the problem is the same: the search engines read nothing and the images take longer to download.

This also refers to graphic CTAs (Call-to-actions). They are very attractive and spotty, yet invisible for search engines. I am not advicing to ditch them, in contrary, since they encourage user to click, but it might be a good idea to also implement text links with long text into the normal html. By long text I refer to the links that are more than a single word and actually describe where the link takes you.

The importance of the SEO optimized text and content has increased especially after Google introduced a significant algorithm change, which puts more weight on fresher content and the text itself reducing the significance of the headers and title tags.

Tip #7: Create a custom 404 error page and redirect broken links

Website content changes constantly and webpages get unpublished causing broken links. It does not only mean that your site visitors might come across one on your website, but also links from other websites into yours get broken. That is bad news, since potential visitors as well as search engines cannot reach your webpage through these links.

This is why it might be worth creating a custom 404 error page, which displays in visitor’s browser if the server cannot find the page. An error page with links to the other areas in your site can help user and search bots find an alternative page on your site. Other solution would be 301 redirect for each link.

Tip #8: Make your website mobile friendly

What is very important to realize is that a standard computer screen is not the same as iPhone or Nokia screen and the PC website looks very different in mobile devices. It is essential to take in account the design and lay-out, the legibility and navigation, and the need of fast and efficient download time. For tips on how to create a mobile-friendly website click here.

Tip #9: Test the website with real users

Having designed and worked with the webpage for weeks or months, it is very easy to navigate across the site and find everything you need. However, pair of fresh eyes can point out the weaknesses and help you improve the user experience.

Tip #10: Do not make an ugly website

Useful and user-friendly are not synonyms for boring and ugly. Web-design is still very important, especially now when Google is using the visual search. Being number one in search ranking is worth nothing if people do not purchase from your site, because it looks … unprofessional.

Website can still be attractive and cool as long as the end user is not forgotten in the process. The point was: make the site SEO and user-friendly, then add the cool stuff on top and win some awards.

When first online supermarkets were launched … they were a flop. After a long silence, the online food and grocery shopping has started to evolve and increase its popularity during recent years, thanks to ongoing development of e-commerce, Internet and mobiles. However, despite of the potential they have, the online supermarkets still reach only a small niche market.

What could bring the online grocery shopping experience closer to the mainstream?

Constantly evolving market

According to International research company IGD, the amount spent on online food and grocery shopping will reach £7.2 billion by 2014. Currently 64% of UK users have done online shopping yet according to the Office for National Statistics, only 13% have bought groceries. In Spain e-commerce is booming, but only 10.7% of the consumers have purchased groceries online. E-commerce in Italy had an estimated value of 10 billion Euros in 2009, but the online food and grocery shopping accounted only for 1.9% of the total.

In France, with a turnover of 250 million Euros, the online supermarkets represent only a small part of the French e-commerce (25 billion Euros). The amount of cyber buyers (24 million in 2009) is increasing, even though the “cyber-markets” are considered to be too expensive with 13% Internet price premium.

Online grocery shoppers

The report Online Shopping 2009 by IGD states that 30% of the online grocery shoppers purchase less often than once a month and 61% visit more than one online supermarket. 49% would like to try alternative store, yet half of users have not done so because they believe it takes too much effort to do . 34% of the surveyed wants to shop only in supermarket and 7% prefers online purchasing for food and groceries.

Convenience is the main motivation for online grocery shoppers to buy online, since it takes less time and physical effort. Overall it is perceived as a more organized shopping experience and means avoiding the queues. 61% of the current and potential online shoppers also stated that having free delivery would definitely increase their motivation to buy groceries online.

The main concern blocking the online grocery shopping is quality. Consumers do not trust companies to deliver them the freshest products and newest sold-by-date if they purchase online.

Best practice – Digital supermarket

Tesco supermarkets in South Korea decided to take it a step further to reach number two position in the country. Instead of opening more physical stores, Tesco concentrated on virtual shopping by creating digital supermarkets called Homeplus in metro stations.  The objective was to bring virtual shopping directly into consumers life. The decision was made after market survey revealed that many consumers concentrated on journeys to and from work without having time to do grocery shopping.

The company designed big screens that looked exactly like physical store shelf where users could use their Smartphones to scan the QR codes and put the products in their shopping cart. When the shopping was done, the groceries were delivered to user’s home once he returned from work.

Online shopping between November 2010 and January 2011 increased 130%, while the number of clients increased 76%. Homeplus itself became the number one online grocery store.

Multi-channel shopping experience

There is great potential in online grocery shopping, since it represents currently only a small percentage of e-commerce and there is a lot of space for growth. Consumers are already using different channels and technologies to shop online and this can be extended to online supermarkets. By offering consumers a possibility to use mobile technology, they are able to purchase on the go, and by bringing online grocery shopping into the physical world, like Tesco did in South-Korea, companies can increase awareness and offer consumers a digital in-store experience.

The future of online grocery shopping looks bright if users are given an online shopping experience that brings them the most perceived value. By offering online shoppers different purchase channels, consistent quality, free delivery and greater choice of products, companies can turn online supermarkets from a niche into mainstream.

Gamification and G-commerce, gamification of E-commerce, are creating a lot of buzz across the globe. According to M2 Research, a gaming and technology researcher, gamification industry revenues will increase from less than 100 million dollars in 2010 to 1.6 billion dollars by 2015. Google on the other hand has invested recently 100 million dollars in the social gaming company, Zynga, and is planning to launch Google Games in the near future.

 Gamification means using game mechanics for non-game apps and mobile/web sites to increase user participation; however “gamification of your brand” does not mean creating a new Farmville. It is not just about making things more fun or turning them into a game. It is about motivations, rewards and engagement.

#1 Set up your objectives

Before jumping into gamification, think thoroughly what exactly you want to achieve. Do you want to increase brand awareness, engage users or loyalize your existing consumers?

#2 Do research and get feedback from best customers

Gamification is cool, but it is very easy to get it wrong – especially if you are gamificating an existing service with an established user base. Do research and ask your best customers what motivates them. Some of them might be motivated by physical awards, some of them by social recognition and some of them by accomplishment only. It is important to get it right to avoid negative or lame reaction. If you really are not sure, test first with a small budget gamification project to see the reactions.

#3 Make sure your gamification is aligned with your brand/industry

There are many types of games, rewards, competitions, trophies, progress reports and other ways of recognition. If your “game” has nothing to do with your brand or your industry, it will only confuse people. Also, make sure it is suitable for your audience, since consumer and business customers and different age groups behave very differently.

#4 Use right gaming techniques for your users

Games are thought as fun, but they do not have to be. The point is finding a way to transfer the techniques that make games addictive for users to other things. By understanding what motivates the users and using the right techniques can reward them for doing things that ultimately help you to achieve your aims.

Fiat did this with the award winning eco:Drive. It is a fun, simple customer loyalty scheme where users could use USB sticks to analyse how they drive and receive suggestions for improvement so they could reduce their CO2 emissions and get better fuel economy. Also an online community called ‘ecoVille’ was created that was populated by consumers around the world using the ecoDrive technology.

Another example of this is the Nike Training Club, an app with an own personal trainer, which motivates users with customized work-outs and rewards. After first weeks of launch the app became iTunes App of the Week in the U.S. and reached the no.1 position in iTunes Health and Fitness category.

#5 Do not try to do it all

Like in Social Media, there is almost an unlimited choice of different and creative things you can do. But just like in Social Media – do not try to implement them all. Focus first on your goals (what behaviour you want to motivate) before you select the tools (which game techniques should you apply). Be selective and see what techniques would work best to achieve your goals.

#6 Do not make it too easy

People love completing a game and reaching the top level, but they love a challenge much more. It is much more motivating for users to really work for the achievement to reach it, than reaching it with a small effort. First level rewards and achievements should be relatively easy to trigger interest and get users engaged, but they should become more difficult to conquer closer the users are the end goal. Harder it is, more likely the user is going to share their achievement with the world.

#7 Do not focus only on extrinsic rewards

In gamification it is important to have extrinsic rewards such as prizes, position in ranking, badging, trophies etc. yet intrinsic motivators such as self-confidence, fulfilment, friendship and loyalty are equally important. Try to think a way to combine these two worlds to create even more satisfying experience.

#8 Use real-time feedback to improve the experience

Just launching a “game” is not enough. It requires commitment and as you start to see results, you may see potential for growth. A basic program may work as a novelty among the users, but in long term users will be asking and expecting much more than a simple trophy. Getting user’s feedback and ideas can help you to improve and offer your customers even better, engaging experience. Make extensions and enhancements to continue to evolve it for the most involved users.

#9 Take advantage of the Social Media

Use Social Media as a promotion, recognition, support and engagement tool. It is possible to increase participation in social media enormously if you get it right. For example, by allowing the user to publish the distance he ran in Twitter or Facebook or recognizing publicly the influencer of the day.

#10 Involve mobile

If the gamification has not focused initially on mobile site or apps, make it mobile friendly. With emerge of Smartphones, people carry Internet with them all the time and being able to influence and engage everywhere makes the user experience even more engaging. If the “game” is successful in the web, creating an app can enhance the program even further.

Highly-conscious opinion leaders

Typical gamer is not anymore the stereotypical “loner”, but can be anyone who wants to feel like an achiever. According to the report, gCommerce: The Gamification of eCommerce, gamers are actually highly-conscious consumers and opinion leaders, who are 50% more likely to be influencers among their friends. Gamers are also 20% more likely to be online shoppers than the average non-gamers. That is what makes the gamification so interesting for brands.

If the motivation is right and the techniques you selected encourage and reward the behaviours you want, you can give these users more reasons to spend time with your brand and tell others about it. If you do not listen to your users and get the motivation wrong, well that is another story.

After the financial and economical crisis, we are experiencing energetic crisis across the globe related to ecological crises such as Fukushima. The planet is heating up and environment is a hot topic all over the planet.

Faced with a more environmental aware consumers, some companies have started to reinforce their social responsibility and especially their environmental responsibility. This tendency, Green marketing or Eco-marketing, tries to bring companies closer to the market niche sensible to environmental issues, environmental friendly products and legal activities, which increase company’s value through ecologic conscience. The aim is to have a more ecologic friendly policies and processes and drive consumers to a more sustainable way of consumption.

However, many companies have decided to get on board of the latest trend and be “green” without integrating it to a real and sincere corporative social responsibility policy. These companies practice “green washing”, which consists of a ecologic “cosmetic surgery” only to improve their image. In these cases, only by scratching the surface it is obvious that these companies only pretend to be ecologic friendly and their practices are not sincere and in many cases even legal.

Top 7 Tips to Create a Believable Eco-Brand

Green-washing has made consumers suspicious of the real intentions of the companies. According to a BBMG study, only 11% of the European consumers trust environmental statements in product packaging and only 5% trusts eco-friendly company advertising. How to convince people your brand is not just green-washed, but is really environmental friendly?

#1 Do not lie.

If you are not environmental friendly, do not make false or misleading environmental claims. If or when you will be caught, bad news will spread fast in Twitter, Facebook and other media.

#2 Do not make promises you cannot keep.

According to a survey by Sustainable Branding Collaborative, 80% of the users claimed that it is worse for a business to fail to deliver on its sustainability promises than it is to not make any such commitments at all.

#3 Environmental friendly? Then prove it.

Measure and verify your sustainability claims with a third party certification. Make sure the certification is Internationally recognized.

#4 Associate your brand with environmental organizations.

Try to associate your brand with well known organizations such as ONG or other associations, which guarantee your social responsibility and give you credibility. For example, Armani with Green Gross, Carrefour with UN, etc.

#5 Be transparent

Do not only talk about being transparent, but publish data openly. Say what your brand does for the environment and what you will improve in the future.

#6 Let users participate

Do not only talk about your company participating on environmental activities. Ask the consumers what they would recommend your brand to do and what they would like to see your brand improve. Take part in local events if possible.

#7 Be active also in the Social Media

Social media activity creates more buzz than a simple, and usually boring, section in the corporative section. Users see that your brand is actually ecologically conscious and participating in green activities, not just claiming it is.

#8 Do not only focus on environmental attributes

Environment is “in” and it is bad for company’s reputation not to participate. Yet forgetting the environmentally active niche – how to make our green products more attractive to the majority? Many of the consumers declare it is important to buy ecological products, but in reality most of these consumers buy the product based on other values. To be believable, do not only preach about environment in marketing communication, since people might think you are fake (especially if you have never spoken about environment before).

Forget the melting ice and disappearing rainforests and make it personal. Marketing messages should focus more in enjoyment than guilt. A product that is enjoyable … and environmental friendly helps you to go beyond the actively green niche and capture lmore mainstream consumers. For example, Tesla has done a great job. It is not known only for being an environmentally friendly electric vehicle, but for being innovative, amazingly fast and wonderfully designed car.

Being sustainable is great and it is even necessary to have environmental credibility. But do not forget that a brand does not have to be boring to be ecological.

“If someone has 1,000 followers, for example, and complains about a company then that company needs to be seen to be dealing with the issue.”

Michael Taggart, head of digital at communications agency MRM

In Twitter bad news can spread very quickly. Re-tweets and complaint “hashtags” (e.g. #vodafail, #BTfail) have increased the importance of proactive and real-time Twitter monitoring and customer service.

Many companies are finally realizing, that to manage their online reputation they need to get involved and do something. Besides Twitter active BT, Alsa, Bank of Scotland and other companies, now the car brand Peugeot has launched officially a customer care centre in Twitter.

By setting up a customer Twitter service you may be able to solve problems before they become crises and close the deal before competitors even know there was one.  But how to make sure it will not just make things worse?

#1 Build a template/chart to help your CRM classify which tweets qualify as high, medium or low alert

There are so many tweets it is important to prioritize. Define tweet’s importance by building a chart that helps your customer Twitter service to classify the urgency of each tweet and see which requires immediate action. Read more details on which tweets/posts to respond, ignore or escalate here.

#2 Decide what kind of customer Twitter service you want to establish

It is important to decide from the beginning whether to establish an official customer Twitter service or simply surprise customers by tweeting. As mentioned before, there are few companies who have opted in for an official Twitter customer service. However, before establishing one, be realistic on your time, resources and budget. The customer who gets a sudden answer and solution to his tweet is delighted, but a customer who does not receive an answer to his tweet for the official customer Twitter service gets more upset.

#3 Establish a clear process

Brief and supply the person/team who handles the customer Twitter service with a clear process. Make sure they know how to classify and prioritize the tweets and who to escalate important issues. All the team should know each others roles in the process e.g. who searches, who classifies, who responds…

#4 Use tools to track the tweets

There is a lot of tweets out there – in 2011 Twitter reached billion tweets per week. Without proper tools, the quantity of information can be too much to handle.

The first tool to use is of course Twitter search to have an overview what people are saying about you, to refine your search and add filters go to advanced search. To monitor in real time what is being said about your industry, your brand or competitors, for example TweetDeck is a good tool.

#5 Act and respond fast

Tweets need to be responded to quickly, approximately within 10 minutes because of the speed they come, go and spread across the social networks.

#6 Assign the right person to answer

Make sure the person who answers is the right person to be handling the post/situation. To be sure, create a list for the people handling the tweets to help them to re-assign the post to an appropriate person e.g. leads to sales, dealer issues for person in charge of dealers, etc.

#7 Do not use a non-personalized automated response and do not Spam

Nothing annoys more an angry customer than an automatic cold non-personalized message in the time of need or anger. Occasionally people get even upset of you tweeting them, but remember not to take it personally. Best way to proceed is to tweet once offering your help or solution, but if you do not get a response and the conversation does not start – Stop. Do not insist, it will just backfire and you will be accused publicly of spamming.

#8 Do not forget the reporting and follow up

Ask the person/team to keep log on the happenings, classifying them by incidents, queries, opportunities and problems. Include the date, person’s “name”, tweet, response and status. This is how you can see end of the month how many tweets have you responded, now many tweets were escalated, how many satisfied customers you had and how many issues were resolved. Then follow up, follow up, follow up. See if these customers tweeted something positive about you, have a look around the web if the escalated issues are also in blog posts and customer forums and think constantly ways to improve the service and process.

#9 Use Twitter Favorites as real-time testimonials

After a while, it might be a good idea to use Twitter favourites to gather positive tweets from your fans and customers. It has its own RSS feed, which is a nice resource of short, 140 character, real-life testimonials for new potential leads – and top management of course to justify the investment. It is short, effective and works.

#10 Ask tweeters how you could improve your customer service

People in Twitter are more reactive and more likely to answer than in other medias. People also like to give their opinion and advice freely. Some of the feedback is quite obvious, but sometimes there are very good ideas as well. Why to guess, when customers know the best what they want?

Customer Twitter service can be a success or a flop. Remember that monitoring and responding tweets is a time consuming task and requires resources. Before going ahead, make sure you are able to answer and follow up the negative feedback, queries and opportunities. If there are unanswered queries or comments or if they are handled sloppily, the end result might be worse than the situation was in the beginning.

Also, do not stop investing in your call centre. BT has a long spread reputation of having a rubbish call centre and there is a big online (and offline) buzz going on saying that if you want to get you problem resolved without hanging on the phoneline for hours, you need to tweet negatively of the company and in 5 min you get a response. There is similar feedback on Alsa, Royal Mail and Bank of Scotland. Maybe it is me, but customers should not be encouraged to complain publicly to get their issues resolved…

Other thing us marketers forget sometimes is that most of the people are not in Twitter and especially older people do not how exactly to use it (or even see a reason to use it). Therefore it is important to concentrate on both call centre and Twitter service. If the call centre is good, quick and effective, there will be less negative tweets spreading across web to thousands of people  and if the customer Twitter service is good the crises are resolved before they even started.

As the world is going crazy about Smartphones, the amount of users watching videos on mobile is increasing the same rate. According to the official YouTube blog, in January 2011 YouTube exceeded 200 million views a day on mobile.

Google also conducted recently a very interesting study surveying more than 16 000 YouTube mobile website users. According to the survey, 75% of respondents claim that mobile is their primary way of entering YouTube, and 38% believe YouTube Mobile will replace their desktop usage of the platform. Google also claims that 70% of the users visit YouTube Mobile at least once a day, and 58% spend in platform more than 20 minutes per visit.

It seems like a good idea to get on board, but how to create a successful YouTube channel?

1. Choose the best YouTube channel for your brand

First of all pick the right YouTube channel for your brand based on your industry, objectives and budget and then personalize it.  There are various options to  choose from:

• User channel: Free set-up, but basic functions only. Video length max. 15 min
• Enhanced channel: Free set-up, includes also branding box, watch page banner, side column image, channel header and analytics. Video length max. 15 min.
• Advanced channel: Min. media commitment 25K. Has everything Enhanced channel has + standard gadgets, remarketing, 1×1 pixel ad tag support, geo/age restriction. Video length longer.
• Custom Channel: Min. media commitment 40K. Has everything Advanced channel has + bespoke gadget
• Contest Channel: Min. media commitment 60K. Has everything Advanced channel has + contest gadget.

2.  Align your Youtube channel with rest of the brand platforms (social media, website…)

To start with, make sure the channel follows the brand guidelines and the message/image is aligned with rest of the brand platforms. Making changes to images, text, flash etc. takes time and effort and having a clear brand image allows user to know it is indeed the official channel of the brand. Remember to test the look and feel also on smartphones.

3. Include reference points

Include the number of times video has been viewed, liked, downloaded, linked or shared, number of subscriptions to your channel, number of comments. More popular the video and channel seem for users, more credibility it gets.

4. Check users comments frequently

YouTube is also a great channel for customer service and data capture. If the user has a doubt or question about the brand or product, try to respond quickly. Good thing is that users have to have a YouTube account to comment and it is possible to send them a direct message privately.

5. Do not forget to link your website, social media sites or campaign minisite.

From SEO perspective including links to your Youtube channel can improve your sites ranking. Also, it will increase traffic to your website, social media sites or campaign minisite. If possible, try to include links when answering the comments (but not unless it is relevant for the user).

6. Engage and capture users with interactive content and competitions

Do not only make videos, but let the users participate. Create a competition across website, YouTube channel and social media platforms and hide “clues” into videos or around the YouTube channel. Let your fans send you videos and publish the best ones. Having their video on your official channel makes users spread the word around their networks and rest of the Internet. It also gives a human face for your brand.

7. Do not expect all the videos go viral

They will not. It is very difficult to create a successful video users spread around the net and sometimes even the viral video creators do not know why it worked. There are some ingredients that add virality to the video: fun, surprise, sex, talent, tips…but of course you need to be careful not to damage the brand image and to make sure the content is suitable for your industry and target audience. If you are a consultancy or B2B firm, usually industry tips, statistics and discussion of current hot topics can add value to the company and let you establish a reputation of an industry expert.

One example of an excellent brand video that will go viral: Mercedes-Benz.tv: Formula One TV Commercial \’Compliments\’

8. Do not forget to include Call to Actions nor contact details in the end of the video

If you are lucky, users will spread your video around the social networks, blogs, forums etc. outside your official online channels. Make sure that you encourage the users to get in touch with you or the brand in the end of the video. Create an appealing phrase and include your website url, facebook page url, Twitter page, Youtube channel url, campaign microsite url or other platform where they can find out more about the brand/company and connect with you.

9. Promote your videos and YouTube channel in social networks and industry forums

Promote your video and YouTube channel in your social networks and industry forums. And your own website of course. As all the online campaigns, this also requires careful planning. You need to be prepared if one of your videos goes viral to support it across the platforms, media and websites for bigger impact. Be also prepared for the negative and positive comments. For tips, which posts require immediate response, which posts can be left for later and which should simply be ignored, click here.

10. SEO optimize your Youtube channel

Include keywords to the video title, description and channel introduction. Both YouTube and search engines (especially Google) classify YouTube videos based on relevancy for the user and keywords he uses. Again, remember not to include only keywords, but direct the description and introduction to user, not only the search engines.

One of the advantages of the increasing online marketing is the easier access to competitors’ information. The problem is: there is far too much of it.

Without specialists focusing on everything from SEO to eCommerce it is hard and time consuming to see and analyse really what is going on around you. Yet concerning the optimization of your online investment, analysis of your competitors may give you better results in SEO and online campaigns. This gives your brand bigger presence in the search engines, which will then increase the traffic to your site, which will then improve the brand reputation, which will then…you get the idea. So let’s spy…I mean “analyse” what competitors are doing.

#1 Search and find out who your competitors really are

Make a list of the competitors you want to follow and in which country you want to follow them. However, especially with the increasing globalization you might know your local competitors, but not your online competitors. They are the companies that appear in search  results when searching your industry, service or product. If you focus on a specific area or you are a SME, do not forget to include as well the geographic location.

Where to search?

• Google/Yahoo/Bing: obvious, yet remember that if you want to search for competitors in Spain, do not search with a different search such as www.google.co.uk. It will not show the results in same order.
• Facebook: Go to search and type name of your competitor, industry, service or product
• Twitter: Go to search.twitter.com and type in your industry or service or even the name of the competitor’s CEO.
• Youtube: Go to search and write down your competitor’s name. Then click search options and you will be able to select channels (official) or videos. You also can pick your industry in categories to have an overview and select the release date of the videos.
• Industry forums: Check which companies/products forum participants recommend.
• Local social networks: Not all is around Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. Find out which social networks are popular in your country (or country you’re targeting) and check if your competitors have presence there

 #2 Get organized

Create specific folders for each competitor, your brand and industry news. This way every time you spot a post, article or an ad, you will have a place to archive it immediately for later review. If you put everything in one folder, after a while it will become time consuming and unpleasant to go through it all and try to filter which news/article/ad belongs to which competitor.

#3 Write down what you want to know

To compare your competitors and your brand becomes difficult if you do not have the same information of each one of them. If you have the list ready before you go through their online activities, it is easier to spot information you are looking for.

For example:

• What services they offer
• What is their price range
• Who their clients are (testimonials/feedback page)
• Who are they targeting
• How do they market themselves (quality of the website, professional…?)
• What is their brand position and what makes them stand out from others
• Are they present in social media (links in the website, social media groups…)
• Which keywords they use

 #4 Search if there are any keyword packed domains available. If there is – get it.

 While you are searching, check if any of the search words you used shows up as  a domain name. If that is not the case, it might be a good idea to buy one part of the search phrase or the whole search phrase as a domain name. It will prevent your competitors using it and it can be used for a blog, landing page or other additional website. Or if you are just starting, you may start using it instead and redirect the old link to your new page.  

 #5 Follow your competitors separately

 Biggest error to do is to receive all the information only to one inbox. Especially if it is a work or personal inbox, Twitter or Facebook account. This will cause information overload and it will be time consuming to separate even after few days which news/tweet/post belongs to each competitor and which belongs to your colleagues and friends. However, some emails have separate filters to organize mail automatically and there is a possibility to create private lists on Twitter to follow competitors, industry news, advocates and critics. This allows you to organize Tweets by category and pull information out effectively.

 #6 Sign up for the monthly/weekly newsletter

 It is a great information package of your competitors’ offers, news and strategy. Do not use work email though: if they notice your company name you will be unsubscribed.

 #7 Be their “friend”

“Liking” your competitors on Facebook or being their “follower” on Twitter does not mean you support them. Instead by being their “friend” you will have a direct access to their promotions, offers, branding and other social network activities in real time. It will increase your reaction speed.

 #8 Set up a RSS feed on competitors pages

 To avoid visiting blogs, competitors sites, twitter lists, social media sites etc. regularly, set up RSS feeds to your specific inbox(es). 

You can also track competitors with Google Alerts, which are free and allow you to filter news based on the search criteria. When Google finds a relevant post or article, you will receive an email with a link.

 #9 Take advantage of the social media tracking tools and see what your competitors do in real time

Competitors’ social media promotions and branding campaigns have become relevant also from SEO perspective now that Google and Bing have included social network activities into their search results. IceRocket, Addict-o-matic, Seesmic, TweetDeck and other tools can show you what competitors do and what people say about competitors in real time.

#10 Take advantage of the SEO tools and find out which keywords your competitors are using

For a quick look, you can use the page source to see the keywords yourself. You can see website’s html code by right clicking and picking “view source” (IE) or “view page source” (Firefox). Have a look at your top competitors’ homepages. No need to read the whole page, because the keywords are near the top. Check if you could “borrow” any of them.

 There are also various advanced SEO tracking tools available:

• Open site explorer: Free. Detailed reports on sites where your competitors are, which will be great use for you to see why they are there and if you should be there as well.
• SpyFu:  Paid. It lets you to access industry trends and allows you to download the keywords used by the competitors. For example, which are the top keywords your competitor websites rank for in search engines and which keyword they use in PPC campaigns.
• Quirk’s Search Status: Free. Small tool at the bottom of Firefox’s browser that allows you to see every meta tag directed at the search engines such as title, description, keywords, author, generators and robot instructions.
  SEOmoz Term Extractor: Free. You give the tool an URL, and it extracts the keywords it thinks are being directed to the search engines. You can see single words, double word combinations, and triple word combinations.
• KeywordSpy: Free and Paid. This browser add-on allows you to see the list of keywords your competitors pay for, keywords they are listed for organically and ads they are running on the advertising networks.
•  Market Samurai: Paid. Analyses the strength of competition in all niches, finds the right keywords for it, builds backlinks to improve your site rankings etc. There is a free trial available.

These little tricks are great way to find out what your competitors are doing, but the idea however is not to copy. By analysing the data you will be able to optimize your online campaigns, websites and search engine ranking, find your competitors’ weaknesses to exploit and react quickly to your competitors’ campaigns, promotions and offers. Learn from the best practices and errors, and see how to best differentiate your brand.

It is also good to remember that your competitors may very well be “analysing” you right now, so check your database. They might have made the error of using their work email.

In my previous post I was discussing whether Facebook Pages will replace official websites and it is largely matter of an opinion. But let’s face it: right now Facebook Pages are “in”. So, why not make most of it?

Facebook’s newsfeed, invitations, and messages are an useful channel to reach your existing fans and their friends, yet it is possible to even SEO optimise your Facebook Page to reach Facebook’s entire database and search engines. Probably because of the questionable ranking of Facebook Pages in search engines, the platform itself has recently concentrated on offering new opportunities for Page owners to improve their Pages SEO – while creating benefit for Facebook as well of course.

How to SEO optimise your Facebook Page?

To start with, select carefully the keywords you want to implement since all your strategy will be based on those. Read how to select the right keywords here.

1. Use business’s real name as your Facebook Page name – and do not change it

Using too many generic keywords as your Facebook Page name can actually harm your Page’s virality rate inside Facebook. If the title seems too long and suspiciously “spammy”, fans are likely to hide your updates from the newsfeed and not share it with their friends – and if they do, friends are not very likely to “like” you. Picking completely generic page name like “Car” or “Australia” is not a good idea either, because Facebook has lately been disabling updates for generically named Pages.

That is why it is recommended to chose company’s/brand’s real name as the name of the Facebook Page. It should however not be changed, because Facebook uses the Page name in the title, and since search engines ding pages when titles change, changing it can give you a lower ranking.

2. Select optimised, long term URL for your Facebook Page

Facebook offers a possibility to pick a specific URL for your Facebook Page, meaning your Page’s URL becomes www.facebook.com/YourUsernameHere. Once you pick a Facebook URL for your Page, it cannot be changed – so think a proper, long term name. URLs can be selected at www.facebook.com/username.

It is an opportunity to use more generic keywords than the Page name itself or combine the Page name with additional generic keywords, yet there is a black list of generic usernames that Facebook Pages (and users) are prevented from registering. The platform has taken privileges from Pages with generic titles in the past, so it is possible that it might punish too generic sites by for example removing their status publishing rights.

Please note: Your Page has to have at least 100 fans before it can select a username.

3. Use keywords in the “About” text box below your profile picture

The “About” text box is the highest place in the CSS structure of the page to add custom text, because of the limitations of the default Wall tab. To add keywords in your Page’s “About” box, click the “Write something about [YourPage]” in the box below your Page’s profile picture (max. 250 characters).

4. Implement keywords and important links into “Info” tab

Facebook “Info” tab is a possibility to add descriptive metadata about the Page. Completing these fields increases the content score in many types of searches.

For example:

• Local searches: Address, City, State, and Post code.
• Product searches: Company Overview, Mission, and Products.

Also, direct links to your own websites or other social media sites increase their traffic and search engine ranking.

5. Create additional “Static FBML” boxes and tabs to include more keyword-dense content on your Page

Adding static text on the default tab of the Facebook Page is quite limited, but there is an app to create additional boxes or tabs that can have any kind of static content such as text, images, and links to increase your ranking. FBML is a subset of HTML and means “Facebook Markup Language”.

How to create a “Static FBML”?

1. Go to the “Static FBML” application on Facebook.
2. Click “Add to my Page”, and pick the page you want to add additional box or tab to.
3. Once done, close the dialog box, go to your Page, and click “Edit page” under your Page’s profile picture.
4. Click the pencil icon on the right in the application called “FBML 1″, and choose “Edit.”
5. Enter the title you want to call the box or tab in the “Box Title” field (max. 10 characters) and enter the HTML you’d like to use in the “FBML” field. Then click the Save Changes button.
6. Once saved, click the “Edit” link at the top of your Page to return to your Page’s application settings. Click the pencil icon next to the name of the FBML application, and choose “Application Settings.”
7. To add the FBML as a box, select “Add” next to the Box option and the FBML box will automatically appear on the Boxes tab. If you want to move it to the left side of your Wall tab, go to the Boxes tab, click the pencil icon on your FBML box, and choose “Move to Wall tab.”
8. To add the FBML as a tab, choose “Add” next to the Tab option. The custom content will by default appear on its own tab on your Page.

Remember however that search engines classify each tab as a separate URL.

6. Post direct links to your website in your Wall

Google favours the pages that link to relevant sites and does not like pages linking to unrelated sites or adding too many links suddenly. Placing links to your status updates gets them closer to the top of your Page’s CSS structure giving you better results.

There are two ways to post links into your Page’s stream:

1. Including the direct URL in the status update – anchor text cannot be controlled, but SEO results are better.
2. Using the “attach link” feature in the Facebook wall – anchor text can be changed by clicking the page’s title before clicking “Share” in the Facebook publisher, increasing keyword density.

7. Add events with keyword-dense descriptions, photos with captions…and a discussion forum if possible

Use all available descriptive fields on all the shared content. When posting photos, implement keywords into descriptions. When posting events, use keywords in the event description field. Adding a discussion forum to your Page and posting interesting content your fans can comment, can increase your ranking considerably.

8. Increase amount of inbound links to your Facebook Page by posting links to your Page on your website

Inbound links from authoritative websites to your Facebook Page can improve its search engine ranking. It can be done with text links, a “Find Us On Facebook” badge or a Fan Box widget for Facebook Pages .

9. Increase intra-Facebook inbound links by getting more fans

The default version of users profile pages include links to the Pages they are fan of. These pages are visible for search engines, which means that more fans you have, more inbound links you get.

10. Encourage fans to comment and like your content

Every time fans comment or like content in your Facebook Page, their name is linked back to their Facebook profile page. When your Page is indexed, search engines see more two-sided links between your Page and your fans, which is then interpreted as stronger bond increasing your link weight.

These little Facebook SEO tricks can help you to reach beyond the people your fans are connected to and show your Facebook Page to Facebook’s entire database. They also can increase your exposure through the search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and Msn. However, it is good to remember that these tips were created by Facebook to also promote their own platform and increase their platform ranking in search engines. Do not forget to SEO optimise your own site and include various links in Facebook Page directing users to your own official site. Otherwise Facebook can indeed absorb your official website traffic.

Social Networks killing E-mail marketing? No, integration of the two is possible – and even recommendable. According to a study by GetResponse, e-mails containing social media sharing options such as Facebook or Twitter generated a 30% higher CTR than e-mails without them. What is even more promising is that the e-mails including at least three different sharing options had a 55% higher CTR. A very significant result, yet the study states that only 11.2% of e-mails currently offer three or more sharing options.

But why to limit to simple buttons in the end of the e-mails, when there are so many other possibilities to integrate e-mail marketing with social media? If just inserting few buttons can be so successful, imagine what other tricks can do!

Top seven tips to integrate e-mailing and social media:

1. Publish Facebook competition winners in the company newsletter

You acquire a double advantage, because besides of additional incentives of social media competitions, the Facebook community becomes part of your e-mail subscribers.

2.  Promote exclusive offers in Facebook and Twitter – that are only available for e-mail subscribers.

Subscribers want exclusive advantages for their loyalty. Reserving certain privileges for only this group, the perceived value of your e-mail subscribers program increases and gives motivation for other users to join. Since social media is highly viral, the information will spread quickly.

3. Include links to the best web versions of your Newsletters to Facebook and Twitter.

This tactic increases amount of people reading and clicking your Newsletter, even more than just adding “like” buttons.

4. Include “like” buttons in newsletters and promotions, but offer users a reason to use them.

A study by Nielsen Norman Group showed that students used much more the “share” option, when they got benefits from it. For example, “share this in Facebook and find out what your friends think about this product”, “Share this in Twitter so your friends know where to find you”

5. Encourage your subscribers to ask through Facebook or Twitter.

Unfortunately, the subscribers cannot answer commercial messages, so show them the dedication of your customer service by encouraging them to ask questions through social networks.

6. Include questions that were published in Facebook and Twitter in your e-mail and answer them.

If a company is active in social networks, it develops constantly a big base of frequently asked questions and answers that should be included in communications.

7. Create a mail group that includes Twitter followers and send them additional information through email.

Twitter followers appreciate the personal perspective the 140 characters offer, so offer them information that awakens their curiosity.

There has been talk about death of E-mail marketing after the emerge of social media, yet both ways of communication can complement each other and create considerably better campaign results. Another additional benefit of these strategies is creating a strong up-to-date database by encouraging social media users to implement their personal information into the company database.

Capturing social media users (Twitter followers, Facebook fans, bloggers…) personal data is complicated, because of the contact permission issues, yet if they give it voluntarily this can create a considerable amount of leads. Not to mention the possibilities the data capture brings for customer loyalization programs.

According to the Google Mobile presentation I participated in December, in Q1 2010 mobile search queries from high end phones on Google grew 62% over the previous quarter. Concerning the e-commerce, Google mobile searches on shopping-related keywords have grown 2500% in the past three years. It is clear that instead of only focusing on desktop SEO, there are real possibilities in mobile SEO that should be taken advantage of. Companies are still strugling with the “normal” SEO and do not have time/resources/expertise to mobile optimize. It means that including mobile optimization into the strategy can improve considerably the campaign results with a lower cost, since there are less competitors bidding for the mobile search keywords. For now.

Mobile optimization in a nutshell:

1. Separate Campaigns
2. Optimize Your Keyword List
3. Create Compelling Ad Text
4. Bid and Budget for Mobile
5. Track Your Performance
6. Optimize Mobile Website
7. Test, test & test

Very interesting point that came up during the presentation was the difference between website SEO and mobile SEO. Even if the mobile SEO is still taking its baby steps, after trial and re-trial Google’s conclusion was that different strategy and separate campaigns are the best way to guarantee stronger results.

Why to use a different strategy:

• Location based targeting: Desktop is primarily used in one location, while mobile is used in multiple locations.
• More refined targeting and creation of personal experience: Desktop SEO is for the masses, but in mobile SEO there are different networks and devices that can be separated.
• More correct ad format to provide the best user experience: Desktop is usually used in times of leisure, while mobiles are mostly used in times of need (except games, social networks etc.)
• Best method to interact with users: With desktop only website based internet can be used, while with mobiles there are both website based internet and apps available.

Why to target mobile separately:

Separate campaigns mean you can isolate performance on mobile and then optimize keywords, ad text, bids & budgets without affecting your desktop campaign.

• More control: Set bids and budgets just for mobile, run separate reports to track results and optimize more easily.
• Relevant messaging: Include messaging with a strong mobile call-to-action and use relevant ad formats.
• Better targeting: With Google AdWords you can target different carriers and devices.

Examples:

• Location extensions – ads are relevant to the user’s location
• Click to call – users click the number to connect to your business
• Mobile site links – mention you have a mobile site.
• Click to download – users click to download pdf, free app, information…

If you are also using Yahoo!, one feature the company has is its new mobile oneSearch^TM service. For example, searching for ‘Cinema’ shows a list of cinemas close to user’s location providing him their address and phone numbers. When user clicks the ‘Call’ link next to a number, a call dialogue box opens on the phone.

Bid & Budget:

Ads appear on high end mobile devices as the default, but the competition in mobile search is stronger for fewer ad slots (5 on mobile vs. 11 on desktop). However, for now the price is still lower than with desktop, because of the smaller volume of bidders.

Competitive bidding:

• Ads appear above the search listings
• A maximum of two slots
• High visibility and higher CTR.

Non competitive:

• Ads appear below search listings.
• A maximum of three ad slots.
• Users have to scroll to see ads, lower visibility and CTR.

Get spidered and indexed by mobile search engines:

Mobile optimization does not work, unless you are spidered and recognized. Main issues that may cause your site not  appearing in the search results are:

Spiders may not be able to find your site

The spider must crawl your site before it can be included in the search index. If you just created the site, search engines may not yet be aware of it. If that’s the case, submit your site to major mobile search engines for quick spidering.

• Google Sitemaps (BETA)
• Yahoo! Submit Your Mobile Site

Spiders may not be able to access your site

Some mobile sites refuse access to anything but mobile phones, making it impossible for spiders to access the site, and therefore making the site unsearchable. For example with Google, the crawler for mobile sites is “Googlebot-Mobile”. If you would like your site crawled, allow any User-agent including “Googlebot-Mobile” to access your site. Please note: Google may change its User-agent information at any time without notice. That is why it is good idea to verify first that it really handles Googlebot in here.

Search engines cannot recognize your mobile URLs

Once spider crawls your URLs, it checks whether the URL is viewable on a mobile device. Pages that are not viewable are not included to the mobile site index.  Make sure that your URLs’ DTD declaration is in an appropriate mobile format such as XHTML Mobile or Compact HTML.  Mobile search engines  have more trouble digesting invalid code, so to be safe use 100% valid XHTML 1.0 code. It will assure that mobile search engines will not have any trouble with your site. For more information, see the Mobile Webmaster Guidelines.

It is also a good idea to ensure that each of your pages has at least one incoming link.